Sorry to again be late. Oh well …
Like many others, we are on home lockdown. Local schools have been cancelled until at least 30 March and possibly until fall. That means Paul will be home schooled and trips to town are limited. I need to go out tomorrow since we are out of chicken pellets. I’ll go by the library as well.
Stores here are doing curbside delivery and the library is allowing only five people inside at one time with touching restrictions enforced. I have books to return and some waiting for me on hold.
I just read that people whose blood type is A are most likely to catch the virus and I’m A+, so I will be more careful.
Mark is still on call for fire and medical responses, but Kamille is off work (she works at the elementary school), and Tyler is on reduced hours (at the local animal shelter). All my senior activities are on hold … lunches etc. I don’t yet know what is planned for the food share events. Something will have to be done since this is a POOR county and a lot of folks need help.
Paul is keeping a “corona virus” journal for his grandchildren. Interesting. Guess he may be catching the genealogy bug.
Other than those changes, we haven’t yet been affected too much. We always have backup for at least a few weeks since we can usually count on snow closures sometime during the winter. And we have plenty of toilet paper.
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We woke up to snow last sunday. Second incident in a short time. Rather late in the season, but what else is new with the current climate behavior. We had snow for the next three days. This morning the outdoor temperature was 41 degrees, so melt is on the way.
However, the late snows have made it impossible to ready the earth for Spring planting. I’ll need at least another couple of weeks before it will be okay to plant anything. I had to call some suppliers and ask for delayed delivery of the plants I had ordered. Normal shipping date would be 23 March, but not this year.
The red maple has started putting on her red spring dress. I hope the cold mornings and snow hasn’t crippled her for this year. But I am afraid the plum and apricot are a loss for this year.
The fig that used to live in the solarium had begun to leaf out, but since the family is using pretty much all the space out there, I moved the fig up into my room. It now lives just to the right of my desk area and has both south and east window exposure. A new shoot is showing and I’ve done a cutting for a new start. I plan on doing some other cuttings of other plants later.
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In addition to the last winter-like weather and the virus shutdowns, we’ve started having earthquakes. There was one to the southwest of the Mountain and several off the coast. Since none was larger than 5.6, I didn’t feel any of them.
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For three days during the latest snows, I didn’t let the chickens out of their house. Had I opened their door they wouldn’t have come out anyhow. As a result, egg production was down.
I did open their door this morning, and at the moment they are clustered in a patch of sunlight.
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I think I have mentioned tourist contamination of want-to-see places and suggested that maybe virtual travel could be a solution. Seems I wasn’t the only one thinking along those lines. I see on the net that virtual tours of many sites are appearing. And I would guess film makers are out doing shoots for virtual travel (and apocalypse films). Great! Maybe now I will find the time for some “traveling”.
Mark and my trip to see the Met production of “The Flying Dutchman” was cancelled. The Met, like Broadway, is dark for the rest of the season. However, both the Met and Broadway are streaming shows, so I will get to see some I would never have seen otherwise … some past opera productions (although not last year’s “Rigoletto”), “Sweeny Todd”, “Company” (I did see this in LA years ago), “Kiss Me Kate” (The 1999 version), and a slew of others.
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I do hope you are all staying well and protected, and I suggest you file the following away to remember when this crisis is past.
According to the Great Leader … during this pandemic “people are dying who never died before.”
So … ‘til next week …